Once upon a time, pols of opposite parties worked together

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Sunday January 6, 2013 5:01 AM

In the 1980s, when he was either president of the Ohio Senate or the No. 2 leader, Republican
Stanley J. Aronoff often received late-night phone calls from Gov. Richard F. Celeste, a
Democrat.

Celeste, “whose mind was always buzzing,” Aronoff recalled, sometimes needed his help to
persuade powerful House Speaker Vernal G. Riffe Jr., a southern Ohio Democrat, to get on board with
an initiative the governor was considering. A lover of books and art, Cincinnatian Aronoff was a
moderate Republican — an endangered species these days — and he and the big-brained Celeste
connected intellectually.

“As you know, I had a very good relationship with Vern Riffe,” Aronoff, now 80, said last month
when I called for his reflections on the 75-year-old Celeste’s election as governor 30 years
ago.

“The governor realized that if he ran ideas through me — not all, but many — that they probably
had a better chance because of my relationship with the speaker. So, I would get calls at all times
and hours and, in a way, if the governor could sell me, then I could close the sale with Vern.”

Not to sugarcoat memories of those bygone days, because there indeed were partisan fights, and
the Celeste era was pocked with pay-to-play scandals, but state governance then was more
cooperative and effective than now, in part because there were strong and pragmatic leaders in the
legislature. A shining example was how Celeste and legislative leaders worked together in 1985 to
handle Ohio’s savings-and-loan debacle, the nation’s worst banking crisis since the Great
Depression.

There were no term limits then, and legislative members from both parties not only got to know
each other, but also each other’s families. There were the usual interparty scrimmages on the House
and Senate floors — sometimes rancorous — but at day’s end the lawmakers and their staffs would
cross Third Street and drink together at the Galleria Tavern.

“The world was different just generally,” Aronoff said. “People walked across the Capitol to the
Galleria and more work was done there when people let their hair down. . . . The governor and I
always listened to each other. We were not competitors in a Democrat versus Republican way. We had
the interests of the state at heart.”

If only such relationships could exist today in politics.

Instead, they have become wickedly personal and destructive. Just try to imagine a Washington
relationship equivalent to the Celeste-Aronoff-Riffe alliance.

It seems impossible, rendering this scenario unimaginable: During 11th-hour negotiations to keep
the nation from going over the fiscal cliff, President Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, calls
House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and asks for his help to bring aboard Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

Here’s what really happened: Obama sat on the sidelines and dispatched Vice President Joe Biden
to rescue negotiations.

Meanwhile, on Dec. 28, Reid went to the Senate floor to accuse Boehner of running a “
dictatorship” in the House, caring more about hanging on to the speaker’s gavel than averting the
$500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts due to take effect New Year’s Day. Later, when
Boehner saw Reid outside the Oval Office, he pointed his finger and told Reid, “Go (expletive)
yourself” — twice.

With the government now on the precipice of defaulting on its bills and the national debt
strangling progress for future generations, there is little reason for confidence in our Washington
leaders. Obama has refused to lead, ignoring the necessary massive spending cuts and entitlement
reforms. Boehner has little control over an ideologically intractable GOP majority — one he helped
create through gerrymandering — that refuses to raise sufficient revenue.

It’s hard to see how we get out of this mess. And it’s hard to remember a time when pragmatic
partisan leaders cooperated.

There was a day, Aronoff recalled, when “everybody worked together without trying to trump each
other.”